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Selling TV Viewing Outside The Home

Advertisers and agencies, though, are reluctant to include out-of-home viewing when negotiating with the networks. Barry Lowenthal, the CEO of the Media Kitchen, says the networks want to count out-of-home viewing since it benefits them. But he says that out-of-home viewing is already a part of the negotiated agreement between advertisers and networks. The out-of-home venue may also play a role in ad receptivity, Lowenthal says. He cites bars and restaurants “in which patrons are eating and drinking alcohol and use non-game time to catch up with friends and co-viewers, making them less receptive to the ad messaging.”

Does out-of-home TV advertising differ from in-home? According to Ed Keller, the CEO of Engagement Labs, an industry-leading data and analytics firm that provides social intelligence for major brands and companies, out-of-home TV viewing offers advertisers some advantages. Noting that out-of-home TV viewing is often in a social setting, they are more conducive toward a conversation about advertised brands, which can produce a larger lift in brand awareness and recall. Based on a brand’s objectives, out-of-home viewing can be more valuable, he says.

As Keller notes, viewers today are distracted wherever they watch television. “At home, they are just as likely to have second or third screens handy than away from home. Also, at home viewers can be distracted by hobbies and chores or flipping to other channels. The distractions are not fundamentally worse for out-of-home viewing versus at home.”

Lindstrom comments, “whether out-of-home viewing is baked into the negotiation or not, wouldn’t it be nice for advertisers to know what they got with their ad investment and to find out how many persons were exposed to the ad message?”

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